The arrow of time

Ivan Voras' blog

Home · New micro-servers

New micro-servers

As previously noted, I have an interest in running large-scale services on equipment which would be called underpowered by many, so I find that this 256-CPU-cluster-in-a-rack is in many ways a dream machine. Of course, I don't think of them as underpowered but as efficient for the task, scalable and finally, green.

Keywords: Efficiency, technology, server, micro servers, Atom

I would go as far as to say that if there need be clouds, these are the type of infrastructure they should run on (of course, highly geographically distributed - maybe 1 rack per 10,000 people). These machines have the following characteristics:

  • Up to 256 dual-core Atom CPUs with Hyperthreading in a 10 U rack enclosure
  • Up to 64 blade-like "compute cards"
  • Up to 64 disk drives
  • The "compute cards" share some of the infrastructure in a semi-virtualized way, like the NICs  and the drives

With advanced server-on-demand (i.e. automatic turn-on and turn-off) capabilities (which I don't know if this product has), this could provide very elastic computing power for distributed applications.

 

Posted on 2011-03-07T19:00 by ivoras

Post your comment here!

Your name:
Comment title:
Text:
Type "xxx" here:

Comments are subject to moderation and will be deleted if deemed inappropriate. All content is © Ivan Voras. Comments are owned by their authors... who agree to basically surrender all rights by publishing them here :)